Rachel Jeantel testimony reveals racial rift

The nation's media remain focused on the George Zimmerman trail, making Rachel Jeantel suddenly a public icon. Criticisms of her communications difficulties and problematic attitudes have sparked a heated backlash from liberal defenders, claiming racism is at the root of disapproval. A pair of essays in The Global Grind, "What White People Don't Understand About Rachel Jeantel," and "Why Black People Understand Rachel Jeantel," essentially made the case that a separate black culture cannot be understood by white people, making them - you guessed it - racist. Such as:

The thing is, what white people see in Rachel has little to do about her own issues, and more to say about the America that white people are blind to.

instead of trying to understand her, people are reducing the miscommunication to semantics, what they call her broken "Kings English," and her anger.

It's just that your world and our world are...excuse the cliche...worlds apart. And that, my friends, was never Rachel Jeantel's fault.

J. Christian Adams at PJM, points out that in framing discussion in these terms, liberals and blacks are making the case that the races lead inherently different lives, that they live in two different worlds. Worlds that will never come together, apparently.

Adams tells us where this view came from:

Coleman sounds like John C. Calhoun (D-SC), the South's leading defender of slavery and segregation. Calhoun believed that blacks and whites could never live together, and that after any emancipation, they'd forever be "worlds apart."

Opposing Calhoun's segregationist ideology was Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA). Sumner's position was the Judeo-Christian one - that all individuals are made in the image of God, hold divine worth, and are given rational freewill to do good or evil.

For this position, he was beaten with a cane on the floor of the U.S. Senate by Rep. Preston Brooks (D-SC).

Sumner's philosophy drove the Civil War Amendments into the Constitution, enshrining into law the notion of racial equality under law. The civil rights movement was all about integration of cultures, as well as in law.

He's absolutely right. I am old enough to remember when integration meant assimilation. Sidney Poitier embodied the ideal of an intelligent, skilled, fully integrated black male. But then came the sixties and seventies. What began as black separatism has morphed into a widespread notion that black culture is different. Inaccessible to whites (though not vice-versa - blacks are fully able to understand and criticize whites), black culture must be respected, and it is up to whites to learn to understand it, though they never will succeed.

Whites are told that we cannot judge other cultures. They are all equally good, except Western culture, which is the source of all evil. If Ms. Jeantel can't read the letter she supposedly wrote, then we must understand the unique value of a culture which focuses on "court nails" more than literacy.

Because a separate black culture would keep blacks unable to adequately access the opportunities in the rest of the culture, the left has come up with the strategy of insisting that jobs, pay, and everything else an employer has to offer must be distributed to equal proportions of racial groups.

Investor's Business Daily presents a chilling summary of the mostly obscure rule changes implemented by the Obama administration that are going to virtually force employers to hire by race and lenders to lend by race, simply because any statistical disparity is now presumed to be caused by discrimination. Read it and be afraid.

So on one side, we have those who believe one learns skills and disciplines, and attempts to make one's way in the world as it is, supplying what buyers of human services want, and earning rewards proportionately. And on the other side, we have some who defend the notion that separate domains exist for whites and blacks (and other ethnicities, too), and that rewards must be distributed proportionately through state pressure.

This is not a healthy situation, to say the least. The only reason Zimmerman was indicted was because of race-mongering not just by the media, but by the Eric Holder DoJ. The fans of racial conflict are being fanned quite deliberately. When Senator Obama said, "I'm a uniter, not a divider," he was lying.

Update. Rosslyn Smith writes:I see a fair share of uneducated rednecks with attitude youth near my home who aren't all that different from Rachel Jeantel. A friend's two 20 something daughters and the males they rut with are prime examples. They are barely literate. They can´t hold jobs because they won´t listen to either instructions or feedback without a huge display of attitude. They have contempt for everyone and everything. Their days are spent between highs from painkillers and crystal meth. They also tend to die young. The drugs take a terrible toll on the body as well as the mind.

The similarities remind me both of Thomas Sowell's Black Rednecks and White Liberals. The credentialed elite who presume to rule over us celebrate the Rachael Jeantels they helped create even as they sneer at similar behavior in the white underclass.

The nation's media remain focused on the George Zimmerman trail, making Rachel Jeantel suddenly a public icon. Criticisms of her communications difficulties and problematic attitudes have sparked a heated backlash from liberal defenders, claiming racism is at the root of disapproval. A pair of essays in The Global Grind, "What White People Don't Understand About Rachel Jeantel," and "Why Black People Understand Rachel Jeantel," essentially made the case that a separate black culture cannot be understood by white people, making them - you guessed it - racist. Such as:

The thing is, what white people see in Rachel has little to do about her own issues, and more to say about the America that white people are blind to.

instead of trying to understand her, people are reducing the miscommunication to semantics, what they call her broken "Kings English," and her anger.

It's just that your world and our world are...excuse the cliche...worlds apart. And that, my friends, was never Rachel Jeantel's fault.

J. Christian Adams at PJM, points out that in framing discussion in these terms, liberals and blacks are making the case that the races lead inherently different lives, that they live in two different worlds. Worlds that will never come together, apparently.

Adams tells us where this view came from:

Coleman sounds like John C. Calhoun (D-SC), the South's leading defender of slavery and segregation. Calhoun believed that blacks and whites could never live together, and that after any emancipation, they'd forever be "worlds apart."

Opposing Calhoun's segregationist ideology was Senator Charles Sumner (R-MA). Sumner's position was the Judeo-Christian one - that all individuals are made in the image of God, hold divine worth, and are given rational freewill to do good or evil.

For this position, he was beaten with a cane on the floor of the U.S. Senate by Rep. Preston Brooks (D-SC).

Sumner's philosophy drove the Civil War Amendments into the Constitution, enshrining into law the notion of racial equality under law. The civil rights movement was all about integration of cultures, as well as in law.

He's absolutely right. I am old enough to remember when integration meant assimilation. Sidney Poitier embodied the ideal of an intelligent, skilled, fully integrated black male. But then came the sixties and seventies. What began as black separatism has morphed into a widespread notion that black culture is different. Inaccessible to whites (though not vice-versa - blacks are fully able to understand and criticize whites), black culture must be respected, and it is up to whites to learn to understand it, though they never will succeed.

Whites are told that we cannot judge other cultures. They are all equally good, except Western culture, which is the source of all evil. If Ms. Jeantel can't read the letter she supposedly wrote, then we must understand the unique value of a culture which focuses on "court nails" more than literacy.

Because a separate black culture would keep blacks unable to adequately access the opportunities in the rest of the culture, the left has come up with the strategy of insisting that jobs, pay, and everything else an employer has to offer must be distributed to equal proportions of racial groups.

Investor's Business Daily presents a chilling summary of the mostly obscure rule changes implemented by the Obama administration that are going to virtually force employers to hire by race and lenders to lend by race, simply because any statistical disparity is now presumed to be caused by discrimination. Read it and be afraid.

So on one side, we have those who believe one learns skills and disciplines, and attempts to make one's way in the world as it is, supplying what buyers of human services want, and earning rewards proportionately. And on the other side, we have some who defend the notion that separate domains exist for whites and blacks (and other ethnicities, too), and that rewards must be distributed proportionately through state pressure.

This is not a healthy situation, to say the least. The only reason Zimmerman was indicted was because of race-mongering not just by the media, but by the Eric Holder DoJ. The fans of racial conflict are being fanned quite deliberately. When Senator Obama said, "I'm a uniter, not a divider," he was lying.

Update. Rosslyn Smith writes:I see a fair share of uneducated rednecks with attitude youth near my home who aren't all that different from Rachel Jeantel. A friend's two 20 something daughters and the males they rut with are prime examples. They are barely literate. They can´t hold jobs because they won´t listen to either instructions or feedback without a huge display of attitude. They have contempt for everyone and everything. Their days are spent between highs from painkillers and crystal meth. They also tend to die young. The drugs take a terrible toll on the body as well as the mind.

The similarities remind me both of Thomas Sowell's Black Rednecks and White Liberals. The credentialed elite who presume to rule over us celebrate the Rachael Jeantels they helped create even as they sneer at similar behavior in the white underclass.